Subjects such as foreign languages and drama could be lost from Gloucestershire's schools despite a £1.3billion cash injection into the education system, it has been warned.

Schools in Gloucestershire have welcomed the extra money announced by Education Secretary Justine Greening yesterday but said pupils in the county are still be funded by much less than students in other parts of the county.

The bailout will stretch over the next two years and will increase the basic amount of funding for every pupil in the country.

But Ribston Hall High School in Gloucester is warning some less popular subjects could be lost as schools are forced to cut costs.

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Sandy Woodcock, finance and facilities manager at Ribston Hall, said: "Gloucestershire is one of the worst funded counties in the country. We will always welcome more money but I'm not convinced that we will see an increase in funding as a result of this. We may see less of a decrease (in real terms).

Ribston Hall School, Gloucester.

"There are schools in other parts of the country which get almost twice as much per pupil than we get. That's just huge. Considering the good education we do deliver in Gloucestershire despite that is amazing.

"Less popular or minority subjects will be cut from the curriculum. This will be to the detriment of all pupils. We're not cutting any subjects this year but it's maybe something we will have to do next year - we have to look at all the options because we can't make ends meet.

"It's encouraging news but I remain a little bit sceptical."

Pupils at underfunded schools would get 3 per cent extra funding in real terms every year, while better funded schools would only get an increase 0.5 per cent per pupil.

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The extra money will be partly funded by a £280million raid from the budget for new free schools, and £315million from 'healthy pupils' projects.

The new funding deal would mean 30 of the 140 new free schools would be funded through local authorities rather than central Government

Plans for a £30million new free school in Cheltenham were announced earlier this year.

Dominic Burke, head teacher at Balcarras School in Cheltenham, said Gloucestershire's education system has historically been "massively underfunded."

Dominic Burke.

He said: "The devil is in the detail. I will give it a cautious welcome that the government has at last accepted there needs to be an increase in the amount of money in the overall schools budget. We've been arguing that for a very long time.

"I still think there's a long way to go in working out fair funding for all schools nationally.

"We have to fund existing schools adequately, and one way or another we need to fund new schools for where there are huge population increases."

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Ms Greening told MPs in the House of Commons yesterday the move showed the Conservatives are listening to people's concerns, but Labour said the move is "nothing more than a sticking plaster."

And the Institute for Fiscal Studies says the new funding arrangements will mean a freeze in the school budget in real terms over the next two years.

Sarah Tufnell.

Sarah Tufnell, head teacher at Barnwood Park Arts College, said: "The news that extra funding is to be used for schools is always welcome news, although it is not yet clear how the funding will be allocated to schools or what the implications will be as money is saved from elsewhere in the education budget.

"It is a step in the right direction but does not go the whole way to addressing the real cuts to school budgets over the last few years.’"